Video Content Battle Ready for Prime Time

These companies are already in competition right now. When Verizon and other telcos, as The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday, say they will start charging content providers for fast access to their networks, they aren't striking a blow for fair play, they're trying to give themselves a leg up as content providers.

Others are taking a spaghetti-on-the-wall approach: Throw everything up there and see what sticks. Hence Yahoo! Go, Semel's broad plan to push his company's content and services on PCs, TVs and mobile devices. Or the new tendency to release movies in theaters and on DVD on the same day. You know things are changing when companies, unsure which strategy is right, choose any and all options.

Given this uncertainty, how can investors keep a scorecard on who's winning and who's losing in the race to dominate video? That, and the complications that are sure to arise, will be the topic of a future column. The immediate danger that uncertainty presents to stocks is the speculative trading that attempts to provide a quick answer. Is Google worth $550? Maybe. Is it worth $2,000? It's way, way too early to say.

It makes me wonder who the first analyst will be to send out a Google price target of a googol, the number (it's a 1 with a hundred zeros after it) from which the company took its name.